Sunday, May 07, 2006

Girl Detectives Are the New Vampire Slayers

This Tuesday on Veronica Mars, our favorite girl detective will solve the bus crash mystery, and sadly, season 2 be over. Season 2 has had its problems, but the last few episodes have really cooked, and I'm totally baffled as to who the villain will be... there are so many likely candidates. All I know is, they'd better not kill Wallace.

After all the drama is over, I suspect I'm going to need some girl detective methadone to tide me over until September.

Enter Lulu Dark, a sharp-dressed dame from Halo City who is dragged against her will into the world of teen sleuthing when her Kate Spade knock-off is swiped at a rock show. Quickly, things become more sinister. At one point, Lulu muses, "There was the missing purse, the anonymous phone call, the weird girl known as Sally Hansen, the disappearance of Berlin Silver, and - scariest of all - the dead shark girl. They had to be related to one another - except maybe Sally Hansen - but for the most part, I couldn't figure out how."

As you can probably judge from the cover, the book has some annoying chick-lit tendencies including the cutely dippy best friend, the painfully obvious 'perfect guy' whom our heroine only sees as a friend... until the end, and of course, lots and lots of fashion fetishizing.

Still, it's a funny book, and surprisingly, a pretty darn good mystery story, too. The stakes aren't anywhere nearly as high as Veronica Mars, but Lulu Dark has a body count, stakeouts, chase scenes, and even a few red herrings thrown in for good measure.

If you liked...: Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn or Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (just imagine Miss Harriet M. Welch trading in her hooded sweatshirt and utility belt for hot pink cowboy boots), this book is for you.

And if you need more V. Mars methadone, over at Bookslut, Colleen Mondor is featuring girl detectives this month in her YA lit. column, Bookslut In Training. Bookslut rules.

3 comments:

My husband recommended I check out your blog. He said something about it being a strange window into my own life--librarian interested in readers' advisory with a sociology phd student lounging around the house possibly thinking about maybe writing that dissertation, maybe.

I've enjoyed poking around and you are right about Blood Done Sign My Name. It was fabulous, life changing, inspiring, funny, and terrifying all at the same time. I'll have to check out some of your other reads.